Concluding the Friends of Chamber Music season, pianist Stephen Hough performed a rich spectrum of both familiar and lesser-known works Wednesday night at Gates Concert Hall.
The first half of the solo recital traveled from Felix Mendelssohn’s somber “Variations Serieuses” and Anton Weber’s sparse “Variations” to Beetho ven’s glorious Sonata No. 32 in C minor.
Dressed in solid black, save for a bit of flair in the form of shiny green shoes, Hough delivered the clutch of seminal works in a no-nonsense demeanor, belying a delightful humor that shone through in his commentary and overall personal style as the evening unfolded.
From the grave opening chords of the Mendelssohn, it was abundantly apparent that Hough is a consummate virtuoso in possession of a prodigious technique and a refined ability to uncover even the most subtle musical meaning before him.
In Weber’s piece, Hough – whose performance style is marked by an understated, economical use of his upper body – illuminated the work’s scanty framework of motifs that nonetheless communicates volumes. Indeed, with its jabs of forte sounds interspersed among carefully intended silences, the intriguing second movement was like listening to the sound qualities of punctuation marks – from exclamation points to ellipses and periods – and still hearing the whole story.
Among the greatest piano sonatas of all time, Beethoven’s Sonata in C minor is a stormy narrative that Hough rendered in a skillful, spellbinding display of dramatic tensions among themes that grow, change and climax into something new. The second movement was particularly memorable in Hough’s hands.
The second half of the program was a wash of waltzes by Carl Maria von Weber, Chopin, Saint-Saens, Chabrier, Debussy and Franz Liszt. As if merely giving his wrist a slight shake to set free a most beautiful music, Hough effortlessly made his way through sequences of butterfly trills, lilting tempos, lyrical melodies and playful musical jokes.
In Liszt’s devilishly difficult “Mephisto Waltz,” the virtuoso let loose a wild – yet consistently controlled – rendering of musical thunderbolts, even as he crafted each gentle musical thought with utmost tenderness.
In a word, Hough’s artistic talent is a gift that can’t be created – it just is. And an evening in his presence at the piano is nothing short of magic.
